Just in time for the weekend, financial reporting executives have some light reading, courtesy of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The agency has finally posted the long-awaited 206-page adopting release for the rule mandating the use of XBRL technology. The rule, formally known as Interactive Data to Improve Financial Reporting, was approved by the Commission on Dec. 17. It phases in a requirement for issuers that use U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or International Financial Reporting Standards to provide their financial statements, both to the SEC and on their corporate Websites, in XBRL, as an exhibit to periodic and current reports, registration statements, and transition reports for a change in fiscal year.

Under the final rule, domestic and foreign large accelerated filers that use U.S. GAAP and have a worldwide public float above $5 billion as of the end of the second fiscal quarter of their most recently completed fiscal year—that is, roughly the 500 largest public companies listed in the United States—must comply with the mandate starting with their first periodic filing after June 15, 2009.

All other domestic and foreign large filers using U.S. GAAP (approximately 1,000 more) will be subject to the requirements the following year, beginning with their periodic filings after June 15, 2010. All remaining filers using U.S. GAAP, including smaller reporting companies and all foreign private issuers that use IFRS as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (roughly 8,700 companies), will comply one year after that.

Financial statement footnotes and financial statement schedules initially will be tagged as blocks of text. After a year, a filer also will be required to tag the detailed quantitative disclosures within the footnotes and schedules and will be “permitted, but not required, to the extent they choose, to tag each narrative disclosure.” The SEC said that change reduced its estimates for detailed tagging in the adopting release by 30 percent to 70 hours for the first filing and 35 hours for subsequent filings.

The SEC estimates the average yearly burden of the requirements over the first three years would be 226 man hours and $27,300 in out-of-pocket expenses per filer.

The SEC also eased the timing of the required Website posting to require filers to post the interactive data exhibit on their corporate Website not later than the end of the calendar day it submitted or was required to submit the exhibit, whichever is earlier. As proposed, Website posting would’ve been required by the end of the business day. The adopting release also clarifies that interactive data must be posted on an issuer’s site for at least 12 months.

The final rule keeps the two proposed 30-day grace periods: one for the issuer’s first interactive data exhibit and another in year two, for the first interactive data exhibit that includes detailed tagging of its footnotes and schedules.

The rule is effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.

Compliance Week Will provide readers will full details in upcoming editions.